SOURCE: "The Snake in the Archives," in New York Times Book Review, April 2, 1995, p. 11.

In the following review, Malone praises James's Original Sin as a well-written mystery novel.

The latest novel from P. D. James, Original Sin, is a portrait of Peverell Press, a venerable London publisher situated in Innocent House, a mock Venetian palace on the bank of the Thames. It is a complex, compelling novel with a murder investigation for a plot. Those who admire the book are likely to say it is "more than a mystery," but this fine novel needs no such excuses. How useful can our definition of the murder mystery be if every well-written instance must be praised by saying it "transcends the genre"? It is a porous form indeed if it can stretch from Charlie Chan to Crime and Punishment, and can include among its practitioners authors as various as Mickey...